The popularity of stand-alone printers has increased with the increased demand for document printing in, for example, the work place, home, or a government office. Indeed, stand-alone printers are relied upon to produce a variety of printed documents, such as reports, letters, legal papers, government documents and even homework assignments. In many contexts, a user may rely on such printers to produce clean, smudge-free documents with clear and well defined printed text and/or graphics. Such printers typically employ a toner supply device (such as a toner cartridge) provided with a corona wire for image formation processing.
A problem that has confronted many printer users is the accumulation of excess toner and other debris on the corona wire. These accumulations can deteriorate the print quality and can interrupt the continuous use of these printers by causing print defects, such as smudging and/or dark streaks on the printed pages. In some cases, technicians were called to remove the toner or debris that was causing print defects on the printed pages. This required printer down time as well as technician expenses.
In many instances, the problem simply required that toner or other debris be wiped from the small thin corona wire in the printer toner cartridge. To address this simple problem and allow maximum working time, tools were developed that allowed the user or technician to clean the corona wire without disabling the printer for long periods of time.
One such tool has been incorporated in an IBM LaserPrinter Series toner cartridge distributed under part No. 1380520 (see FIG. 1). The IBM cartridge utilizes a long, narrow, plastic arm 74 that extends the width of the printer cartridge (i.e., the length of the corona wire 75). A seat 76 resides at one end of the arm 74. The seat 76 houses a felt piece 78 that wraps around the corona wire. The other end of the long arm 74 includes a handle 80 that protrudes to the outside of the printer cartridge, allowing the user to access and manipulate the long, narrow, plastic arm 74. When the corona wire needs to be cleaned, the user or technician holds the handle 80 and pulls the long, narrow, plastic arm 74 out from the side of the printer cartridge, causing the felt piece 78 to slide along the length of the corona wire. As the felt piece 78 slides along the corona wire, toner or other debris accumulated on the corona wire adheres to the felt piece or is pushed off of or along the wire.
To use this device, the printer must be positioned such that the plastic arm can be pulled out from the side of the printer cartridge by a distance at least the length of the corona wire. Thus, there must be space, at least the length of the corona wire, on one side of the printer. Further, the relatively long length dimension of the lever arm, from the handle to the seat, results in a lever action which has a propensity for imparting a relative large force on the corona wire, which may be subject to breakage.
Other types of cleaning tools include a member which is pressed upward against the wire for the purpose of cleaning the corona wire, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,788,573 to Nakaoka et al. In such designs, the pressure force imparted by the upward pressing of the tool must be predetermined and controlled so as not to break the corona wire.